Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Yanks going to Le Mans

With feverish worries over the influx of Ahem! Darn Foreigner’s comin’ over here and snapping up all of those vaunted Indy Car seats... Whale fear not, as there appears to be a small cadre of Americans planning to cross the pond this June to compete in the 78th running of le 24 Heurs du Mans.

As some Cat named Marco, as in Marco Andretti has already been confirmed to drive a Rebellion Lola LMP1 chassis with co-drivers Nicolas Prost and Neil Jani. Recall that Jani is an ex-KV Racing Technology Champ Car driver while Nicolas Prost is indeed the son of Four Time Formula 1 World Champion Alain Prost.

And in today’s Robin Miller piece on SPEED.com, now claiming that The Son ‘O Stash, neee Graham Rahal will return to Newman Haas Lanigan Racing as Heideki Mutoh’s teammate beginning at Long Beach... Robin noted that Graham had just finished testing GM’s ALMS Corvette GT racecar, as all I could find was Graham’s tweet ‘bout how he couldn’t wait to drive the C6R GT2 racecar... In what apparently was an audition to potentially race the ‘Vette at the Circuit de la Sarthe this summer? Since I cannot get into the American Le Mans Series Fan Forum about Graham and American Butch Leitzinger testing for Corvette...

And I’ve already mentioned that Scott Pruett will drive the new Jaguar XKR GT this summer in France, where Corvette Racing’s Johnny ‘O (O’Connell) likes to get speeding tickets out in the countryside.

And while Graham could be lining up at Long Beach after hopefully driving Sarah Fisher’s Dollar General ride onto the Podium in the next two Indy Car events, I still find it hard to believe that Mr. IZOD, nee Ryan Hunter-Reay’s drive there still isn’t confirmed? As in really? IZOD’s going to pass up the largest populated state in the country?